Halpern Wins Big and Gets Bracelet      
 
July 23, 2009

When people go from online gambling poker playing to the real deal, quite often they have a hard time getting one to reconcile with the other. Online gambling, although similar in nature to a poker game, is not the same if for no other reason than the fact that they are not under the same amount of pressure that you are in a live game. For many online gambling players this makes it tough to make the switch.
 
The World Series of Poker says that they see many online gambling players come from one world in an attempt to get into the other, but the two just don’t mesh together the way that they would hope they would. They say that one of the biggest reasons online gambling patrons don’t do as well is that they have never sat at a live game.
 
But for David Halpern it was a different issue. Halpern wanted to win a poker bracelet more than anything, and with his attendance at the World Series of Poker getting off to a bumpy start he wasn’t sure he would be successful. However, the online gambling player ended up winning big in both cash and bracelet value, much to his surprise.
 
He tried to buy into an event that was already full and tried instead to see how he might do at Event 23 – the Seven Card Stud Hi/Lo 8 or Better tournament. It had 467 players, all of whom had a $1,500 buy in. Halpern watched the players fall one by one until it was just him and Dr. Max Stern. Stern already has three bracelets, and Halpern was trying for his first – the odds were on Stern to win. However, Halpern showed them all and walked away with the $159,390 cash prize as well as his first bracelet.

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